


don't know how I survived (I must've slipped between its teeth)

by thatsparrow



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-26
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2019-11-06 05:54:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17934113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsparrow/pseuds/thatsparrow
Summary: Fjord is sacrificed to Uk'otoa when he's fourteen. He doesn't expect Uk'otoa to send him back to the surface with orders to follow.--Or, a slightly AU version of events in which Uk'otoa plays a much more active role in Fjord's life.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> originally inspired by [this piece of fanart from rabdoidal](http://rabdoidal.tumblr.com/post/178884992265/ive-been-listening-to-the-mariners-revenge-song)
> 
> title from "the mariner's revenge song" by the decemberists

Fjord is sacrificed to Uk'otoa when he's fourteen.

He'd been stripped down to his underthings that morning by two of the priest's acolytes, stone-faced men tattooed from forehead to fingertip in yellow-orange scales who'd painted him up in matching pigments; the dye sat thick as mud on Fjord's skin and felt no less dirty. They'd started with the head of the snake under his ear—jaws cracked wide, teeth outstretched again the naked skin of Fjord's throat—wrapping the body of it rope-like around his neck and down the back of his right shoulder. A diagonal line that starts under his arm and circles over his chest, crossing his hip and around the back of his thigh, the front of his knee, the goosebump-ridged skin of his calf, ending somewhere above his left ankle: a scaled ribbon wrapped around a maypole. _Our gift to the mighty Uk'otoa_ , they'd said. Fjord thought it looked clumsily done, but no one was asking his opinion on any of this.

When it's time, they bring the ship a couple miles off the coast before raising the sails, the ocean under the timbers clear for forty yards down to where it goes dark blue as a bruise. The sun's shining something fierce in Fjord's eyes, bright like molten gold spilled across the whitecaps, and that strikes him as an unfair thing: there's an injustice to this affair that should be echoed in the skies, the gods should have sent lightning and storm clouds instead of Sunday picnic weather.

While the priest speaks from the bow, an iron collar is fastened around his neck, heavy and chafing to go with the chains around his wrists and ankles—not that anyone expects him to run, not as if there's anywhere for him to run _to_ , but to ensure he'll sink as quickly as possible. Gods forbid they keep Uk'otoa waiting.

"We thank you, Uk'otoa, for another decade of our continued safety." One of the acolytes has a hand wrapped tight around Fjord's upper arm, steering him towards the end of the gangplank where the wood shifts unsteady under his weight. "We hope you accept our offering and we pray for another ten years of peace to come. In your power and in your name, we pray: Uk'otoa."

Reverent, whispered, the congregation repeats. _Uk'otoa_.

 _Uk'otoa can't hear you_ , Fjord thinks. _Uk'otoa doesn't care_.

And then there's a palm planted between his shoulder blades, shoving him forward until even the wavering stability of the gangplank is gone from under his feet, and he's falling for no more than a moment before the water hits him like a blow. Ten feet under, then twenty, and too soon Fjord feels his lungs going hungry for air, panic wrapping a tight-fisted hand around his throat as he sinks further towards the black below. At some point, the dimness of the light becomes so absolute that Fjord only figures he's still alive by the thudding pain in his chest, the pressure bearing down on him from all sides, the cold he can feel worked down to his bones. He doesn't remember when he finally opens his mouth, but he does remember the fear he feels when the water comes flooding in, a broken dam filling up the air-starved space in his lungs.

_I don't want to die, I don't want to die, gods, please—_

He can hear his heart beating loud in his ears, his vision shrinking to the sunbursts behind his eyes, but just before the end, Fjord would swear he catches a flicker of yellow somewhere in the depths beneath him.

He wakes up on a beach with sand in his hair, spitting saltwater from the back of his throat.

 

— 

 

It's a few hours of walking up the coast before Fjord finds a fishing village settled on the beach, this collection of driftwood shacks bleached white as bone between the dunes. He'd scraped the rest of the paint from his skin on the walk, but when a half-elven man catches sight of him on the shore near one of the drying racks, Fjord doesn't know how to account for being in nothing but his salt-stiffened underclothes, doesn't have an answer for the chains around his wrists or the collar at his neck.

Whatever the man thinks of him, though—runaway slave, most likely—he doesn't voice it. Just gives Fjord a once-over and asks, "You alright, boy?" before bringing Fjord into his home and wrapping him up in a heavy blanket that smells of smoke and brine. The man—Quinn, he tells Fjord over a handshake, his skin chapped across the palm—doesn't have any remedy for Fjord's chains, but he does send word for a druid woman who lives further down the beach.  

"A little odd," Quinn says, "but mayhap able to do somethin' clever with that iron."

When she arrives, she comes into the shack without ceremony, a sea-weathered halfling with greying hair cut close to the scalp and a rough oval of tanned seal skin over her left eye. Fjord doesn't ask how she lost it, but she must catch him glancing at the patch because she says, "Was a lesson the gods didn't want me forgetting anytime soon." Her voice reminds him of a bonfire on the shore, salt-soaked wood sending up sparks under the heat. She reaches for each cuff of the chains and traces a rune across the metal, steady and shark-eyed in her work, and as she finishes the incantation, Fjord watches the restraints rust in rapid time beneath her touch, the iron going brittle before breaking open from around his limbs. The skin underneath is chafed red and carved open in places, and Fjord hadn't realized how heavy the weights had been sitting on him until they're gone.

Once she's done, she doesn't accept their thanks, just reaches for the woven bag that Quinn offers her, strong with the smell of dried fish. After she's gone, Quinn turns to Fjord and says, "A strange woman, but damn useful. Now take a seat, boy, and let's take care of those wounds."

 

—

 

That night while he's sleeping on Quinn's borrowed cot, a nasty-smelling disinfectant applied to the rubbed-raw skin at his wrists and ankles, Fjord dreams of being underwater.

It's dark at first, enough so that he can't make out the shape of his hands even when he brings them close to his face, can only tell where he is by the dull chill against his skin and the gentle pull of a deep-sunk current. Then the black is broken by the curve of a sideways crescent, growing wider like a waxing moon until Fjord is looking at the full shape of an unblinking, orange-yellow eye.

 _Potential_ , a voice says in his mind, echoing through his bones like a reverberating bell. _Reward_.

In the gold-hued light of the iris, Fjord can see it's bordered by a ring of overlapping scales. Looks down and there's the acolyte-painted snake winding across his chest and legs, the chains drifting between his wrists and ankles like strands of tangled seaweed.

 _Find_.

Fjord blinks, and he's standing on the dock of some port city, the eye turned to an orange-flared sun sinking past the horizon. The harbor around him is crowded and shifting like a fast-moving school of silverfish: deckhands with tanned skin and cuffed breeches unloading cargo from merchant ships, a dark-skinned elf woman in a wide-brimmed captain's hat talking fast in a tongue Fjord doesn't recognize, a pair of stern-faced crownsguard lighting the dockside lamps as the sun dips lower. Hectic and overwhelming enough that it takes Fjord a moment to realize that the approaching crownsguard haven't just passed by him but walked _through_ him, moving past as if he has all the solidity of an illusion, the presence of a ghost.

 _Find_ , the voice tolls again, abrupt and commanding, sending a rattle through Fjord's teeth until he chooses a direction and starts walking. Doesn't know what he's meant to be looking for until he catches sight of a three-mast ship called the _Tide's Breath_ tied to the end of the harbor and feels a chill winding around his shins, the curve of something scaled tangling around his legs and holding him in place.

 _Find_.

At the base of the gangplank, Fjord sees a taller man directing deckhands onto the ship, his face relatively unweathered even for the shadow of gray at his temples. Sleeves rolled up to the elbow and he's as tattooed as Fjord would expect from any sailor, but there's no tribute to Uk'otoa in any of the ink—no snake wrapped bandage-like around his forearms, no patina of scales running across his skin—and that alone is something of a relief. Wherever he's being sent, at least Fjord can be sure it isn't back to the acolytes.

"Hey Vandren—" one of the sailors says, and the man tips a head in his direction, "—where do you want those crates from Nicodranas?"

Vandren starts to respond, but before Fjord can hear any of his answer, the vision of the harbor dissipates like fog burned away by the early morning sun, fading from under Fjord's feet as he falls back into the water. _Reward_ , the voice says and, in the dark, Fjord would swear he feels something settle around his neck, tightening against his throat, curving up towards his ear. Whispers again, _reward_.

When Fjord wakes up, there's saltwater running down his chin, a damp stain drying on the front of his shirt.

 

—

 

It takes him six months to track down Vandren and the _Tide's Breath_ , bargaining and begging for passage across the Lucidian—and every night the shift of scales against his neck and the taste of brine in his mouth—until by chance he crosses Vandren's path in Bisaft, restocking before he continues on to Marquet. Vandren laughs at first when Fjord asks for a spot on his ship, says, "Kid, don't you have a home you should be gettin' back to?" over his shoulder. But Fjord is stubborn, and Uk'otoa's voice is insistent in his ear— _find_ —and so he follows Vandren around the docks until he relents, taking Fjord on as a cabin boy for the remainder of their trip.

(Fjord won't realize until later that Vandren wasn't in need of an extra deckhand when he was hired, that it wasn't Fjord's words that had changed Vandren's mind so much as the hollow look of his cheeks and the twice-mended shirt sitting too broad across his shoulders. Saw the hungry edge in Fjord's eyes and realized this was a boy with no home to return to.

It won’t be until many years after that when he’ll wonder whether Uk'otoa had been sending Vandren dreams of his own.)

Vandren's sympathies buy Fjord a place in the crew, but he makes it clear before they leave Bisaft that he's not looking for any extra weight among his cargo; if Fjord is hoping for passage or coin, he'll have to earn it. He tells this to Fjord with a flint-sharp tone, makes reference to stranding Fjord on the closest rock they happen to be sailing past if certain standards aren't met, but he's not so unkind as to ask Fjord to find his way without a compass. Pulls Fjord aside whenever he has the time and shows him how to tie knots that nothing less than a blade could break, runs him through the ship's posts until Fjord knows them as well as his own name. On clear nights, he takes Fjord up to the crow's nest and teaches him the pattern of the stars, to recognize the freckled clusters and how to navigate by the light of them. He's slow to answer questions about his own history, but always has a patient ear whenever Fjord wants to learn something new about the _Breath_.

And that's much of how Fjord's life goes over the next few months, waiting for Vandren's next lesson while his afternoons are spent learning hands-on from the rest of the crew. He builds a new set of calluses from the hours he spends up in the rigging, learning to keep himself steady among the ropes even when the waves are thundering under the keel. He scrubs brine and salt-scum from the deck until his knees ache, serves midnight watches with a spyglass folded in his lap and his eyes trained towards the blue-black of the horizon line. He learns to shoot dice and whiskey, to chart a course across the seas with compass and sextant, to swear in four different tongues.

He hasn't dreamed of Uk'otoa in months.

Some of the crew disembark with the cargo when they get to Marquet and Vandren pulls Fjord aside to ask whether he'd like to do the same. "Plenty of opportunities in a place big as this," he says, tilting his head towards the city. "Likely you could find a better life than what I have to offer on the _Breath_. Don't take this to mean I'm unhappy with you or nothin'—you learn fast and you work hard and I'm more'n happy to give you a real place on the crew if that's what you prefer—but the choice is yours. Whichever way you decide, do me a favor and let me know by the end of the evenin', understood?"

Fjord's made up his mind before Vandren's even done talking, but he spends the day exploring Marquet if only so Vandren will believe he's not making his decision on an impulse. Not that Marquet doesn't seem nice enough—all these white-painted buildings shining like a cluster of pearls against the coast—but even with his stomach full from a skewer of curry-spiced shrimp, even after catching the lingering look of a dark-skinned boy his own age, the city doesn't sing to Fjord like the ocean does. He doesn't know how he'd fall asleep with the ground so steady under his feet. What sort of life could Marquet really have to offer him, anyway? Like any of these narrow, prettied-up doorways are so desperate to take in an orphaned half-orc boy. Like his days wouldn't consist of scraping together enough copper for food and fuck-all else. No, at least on the _Tide's Breath_ he can forget what it's like to be homeless; at least under Vandren's guide, he can pretend what it's like to have a father.

Vandren doesn't seem surprised when Fjord chooses to stay with him, but he does pull Fjord aside for that same chat when they next arrive in Nicodranas, and again in Port Zoon: "There's more to the world beyond what you can see from a ship's bow, son. You sure you're not interested in explorin' some of it?"

"You trying to get rid of me?"

"Just makin' sure you know what else is out there." Fjord must not look entirely convinced because Vandren gives him an easy smile and says, "Relax, son. You know you've got a place here so long as you want it."

But whatever Vandren's waiting for, whatever wanderlust he thinks is gonna take Fjord by the collar whenever they coast into a new harbor, that moment never comes. The years go on, and every time they drop anchor and Fjord gives a last farewell to disembarking crew, he thinks it would take an act of god for him to say goodbye to Vandren like that.

As it happens, gods have a funny sense of humor.

 

—

 

All told, Fjord spends seventeen years with Vandren on the _Tide's Breath_. In that time, the crew turns over often enough that Fjord gets used to the roulette wheel of faces, a new rotation of characters picked up at every other port: an almond-skinned tiefling tattooed from wrist to shoulder, a white-haired gnome fellow with a habit of tightrope walking across the rigging, a broad-shouldered goliath with a raked scar across their scalp. But on the whole, most of the deckhands blur together—a long series of folks with skin tanned dark from the sun and eyes weathered half-shut against the glass-sliver glare of the light off the water—and, at first, Sabian strikes him the same as any of the others. Maybe a little quieter than the rest, but he's got calluses across his palms to rival Fjord's and the defined lines of labor running through his forearms, and Fjord won't begrudge a fellow his solitude so long as the work gets done.

Later, after the _Breath_ is scattered to shards across the waves and Fjord feels himself drowning for the second time in his life, he'll wish he'd killed that snake-eyed motherfucker the moment that they met.


	2. Chapter 2

Uk'otoa sees fit to spare him a second time, or maybe it's not possible for him to die again, Fjord doesn't know. He thinks he spends more time underwater than he should've been able, burning pieces of the _Breath_ sinking around him like slow-moving comets, but it's not like he was keeping track of the time, so. Maybe he really did hold his breath for however long he was under. Maybe the shore where he woke up hadn't been so far away from the wreckage. Maybe, but when that many maybes start to stack up, Fjord thinks it likelier there's some other force at play.

He makes camp further up the beach that night, falls asleep with some sense of trepidation in his stomach like his nerves have gone skittery as sand fleas, but the dream from Uk'otoa never comes. Days go by, then weeks without any kind of sign or message, and Fjord doesn't know whether to take that as blessing or malediction. Not that he misses waking up with the tang of saltwater on his teeth or the shadow weight of scales at his neck, but Uk'otoa was the one who'd pointed him to Vandren and that hadn't turned out so bad, had it? Near two decades of peace with as much of a father as Fjord had ever known and however he spins it, that had been Uk'otoa's doing. When he thinks of it that way, maybe the acolytes had done him a favor in sending him to die.

Still, the uncertainty of Uk'otoa's silence worms its way to the base of Fjord's skull and sticks there like a burr, rough and prickling against his skin whenever he turns his head toward the sea. Doesn't know whether the quiet means that Uk'otoa's forgotten him or grown tired of him or some other such thing. Doesn't know which reason he'd prefer.

For the most part, though, he puts the great watery enigma out of his mind and gets on hunting for Vandren, scouring the docks of every coastal city around the Lucidian and burning through every copper that comes his way in the search. But months go by with nothing to show but empty pockets and emptier rumors and eventually Fjord swallows the hard truth that Vandren must be gone, laid to rest in a sailor's burial several fathoms below the waves. The day he decides to stop looking, Fjord buys the priciest bottle of whiskey he can afford and spends the rest of the afternoon drinking it on the beach, holding a private funeral as the world turns blurred as fogged glass before his eyes, starts to spin around him like he's at the center of a slow-moving maelstrom. He tips the bottle back until it's nearly upside down against his mouth, the last beads of whiskey dripping unhurried from the lip, and in his frustration and his fury, Fjord brings the bottle down against a nearby rock—a foolish fucking decision that earns him nothing but a half-dozen cuts across his knuckles and a handful of slivered shards buried around him in the sand. Vandren would've laughed at him for that, and the thought somehow hurts Fjord worse than any of the pieces of glass stuck in his skin.

It's dark enough and Fjord's drunk enough that every moment feels like an uncertain decision, the world around him gone tilted like a ship's keel cresting down the curve of a wave; much like being on deck in the middle of a tempest, every step that Fjord takes is several extra degrees of unsteady. But, somehow, he pulls himself to his feet and makes his way down the beach to the water, wading knee-high into the surf even as his toes start going numb from the cold. Sobers up some as he feels the tide tugging against his calves with frigid fingers, asking to carry him out and under the drift, to lay him to rest somewhere on the ocean floor along with Vandren.

"Why couldn't you have saved _him_?" Fjord shouts towards the horizon, calling out like Uk'otoa can hear him. Like Uk'otoa even gives a shit what he has to say. "Pulled me from the water twice, but you couldn't spare any of those great fucking powers to help Vandren?" The cold is needle-sharp against his shins, sends a shivering rattle through his teeth but Fjord pushes out a little further into the waves. "Why are you the one who gets to decide? Why the fuck is it _me_ still standing here and not him?" The water is up to his thighs now, the sand under his feet given way to rough-edged stone. "Why the fuck am I so special, huh? What the _fuck_ is it you _want from me_?"

Fjord stands there for a moment, his breeches waterlogged and him chilled down to the bone, waiting for an answer that doesn't come. Of course it doesn't, because what the fuck had he really expected? Vandren's gone and no word from Uk'otoa could ease the pain of that.

He's about to give up, go find some stretch of beach to pass out on when there's a flash of yellow-green light and Fjord feels _something_ materialize in his hand, his fingers closing reflexively to keep it from falling into the waves. He looks down and wonders if he's already gone unconscious when he sees it's the hilt of a fucking _sword_ that he's holding, a slight curve to its edge and a cluster of barnacles grown around the base, saltwater dripping from the blade like he'd just pulled it from the ocean. Isn't convinced he's not having some sort of wild fucking fever dream until he tests his thumb against the edge and feels a flare of pain, sees a smear of his own blood left behind on the steel.

"Most people send flowers," Fjord says, half under his breath. He thinks he catches a glint of orange off the metal, a brief flash like the blurred reflection of a gold-hued eye, but he's still drunk enough to convince himself he imagined it.

 

—

 

Fjord wakes with the sun bright as a lightning burst in his eyes, his head aching like it's taken the brunt of an uppercut blow. Feels bile rising fast in his throat as soon as he tries to move, and at least manages to roll over onto his side before he throws up the bulk of last night's whiskey. Thanks whatever god is listening that he avoids staining the front of his shirt.

When he's able, he pulls himself upright and rinses the sour taste of stale liquor out of his mouth, spitting the swill out onto the sand and that's when he catches sight of something lying on the beach a few feet away. Flatter than a piece of driftwood and giving off a dull iron-grey sheen where the sun hits it and it takes Fjord a moment to realize he's looking at an honest-to-gods _sword_ and— _shit_ , okay. Okay. So that part of the night hadn't been a dream after all. It's still got those briny mollusks encrusted around the cross-guard like it's spent decades underwater, the stain of his own blood dried red-brown against the metal, and he supposes that accounts for the hot pulse he can feel in the pad of his left thumb.

Alright. Sure. So now he's got a goddamn sword. As far as he can figure, there's no message from Uk'otoa telling him what he's meant to do with it, but—there's really only one purpose a weapon like that can serve and Fjord already has a notion of who he might like to use it against.

The next day he catches a ship to Port Damali, working his way down the coast while hunting after any whisper of Sabian. Gets word that one of Sabian's former crewmates is usually found at some shitty dive near the harbors of Port Zoon and burns through the rest of his funds bartering for passage on the next ship out. He spends an afternoon camped out at one of the tavern's back tables with an untouched tankard in front of him and fury hot in the back of his throat as he watches the skinny fuck finish off his fifth glass of ale, slipping out the back door when he sees the bastard heading for the privy. By now Fjord's become comfortable enough with summoning the falchion that it's waiting in his hand as soon as the man comes out the bathroom door, curved up under the man's chin while Fjord's forearm pins him back against the wall.

"I'm lookin' for Sabian," Fjord says, keeping his words low. The unfamiliarity of Vandren's voice still sits a little uneven on his tongue. "Where the fuck is he?"

"What? Who?" The man tilts his head back as far as he can, trying to pull away from where the falchion's edge is grazing his windpipe. "I swear to—fuck, man, whatever god you pray to—I've no idea what the fuck you're on about." His breath reeks of cheap ale and stale smoke, the scum dredged up in dockside alleys.

"Bull _shit_." Fjord lets the falchion weigh a little heavier on the man's throat, just shy of opening the skin. "I know you two sailed together a year back, and now you're goin' to tell me everything you know about that weaselly fuck unless you want my face to be the last thing you ever see. And I ain't a patient man, so _talk_."

"Okay, okay, okay," the man stammers, struggling to swallow around the weight of the blade. "Sabian...half-elf fellow, right? Dark hair, sort of quiet — that's him, yeah?" Fjord nods. "Okay, sure, I remember him, but I don't know shit _about_ him. Look, whatever he did—owes you money, fucked your sister, gods-know what else—I can't help you out."

"Don't fuckin' _lie to me_ ," Fjord says between his teeth, the words almost a growl.

"I'm not! He barely talked to anybody let alone me and, I swear to you, I've got no fucking clue where he is now. Trust me, man, I don't give a shit about Sabian, and I certainly ain't looking to die for him. Please, you have to believe me, please, _please_ —"

"Gods, shut the fuck up," Fjord says, pulling the falchion back as the man slumps to the ground at his feet, wide-eyed and mostly incoherent, rubbing at the red line cutting sideways across his neck left behind by the falchion's edge. What a waste of his fucking time. Fjord leaves him there as he heads back to the tavern proper, paying for his still-untouched tankard before walking outside, anger and frustration knotted thick in his throat at fucking _another_ dead end. He knows Sabian's still alive, saw the bastard dive overboard before the _Breath_ went keel-up, but he might as well be a fucking ghost for all the luck Fjord's had in finding him.

His search continues taking him south, and eventually he winds up in Nicodranas where he meets Jester, and then Beau, and before Fjord's given much thought to it, he's on this whole separate track of his life. Takes him further inland than he ever expected to be and he hasn't worked on a ship in _months_ but he falls asleep with folk who act like honest-to-gods friends, and that's something, isn't it? Vandren's voice coming to him easy now and the way Jester smiles at him across the campfire doing funny things to his stomach, and on the whole, it feels like a life Fjord could grow accustomed to. _The Mighty Nein_. A strange fucking group but he feels a certainty with them that he hasn't known since those early days on the _Breath_. Sees the reaching spires behind the gates of Zadash and thinks of those chats between his fourteen-year-old self and Vandren, reminding Fjord of all the world he still had left to see. Of course Vandren had been right; he usually was.

Fucking perfect that this is the moment Uk'otoa chooses to come back.

 

—

 

A few days after finding that yellow-eyed crystal—Uk'otoa's voice in his head, which he should've seen coming, and _Vandren's_ face in the water in front of him, which blindsides him like a knee-buckling blow—Fjord's dreams turn a new flavor of vivid. A beach of fine-grain sugar-white sand shouldered by some of the bluest water he's ever seen; acid-green vines tangled like matted carpet across a jungle floor and a choking humidity to the air that weighs Fjord down even in his sleep; the ascending rise of temple steps, sandstone edges worn smooth and the smell of dried blood thick in his nose. Uk'otoa tells him, _find_ , and it feels like more of a command than Fjord's ever heard. Not a suggestion but an order, punctuated by brackish saltwater spilling up from the back of his windpipe, jerking him awake so he can cough the rest of it from his lungs.

"Fjord?" There are tears in his eyes and his throat still stings something fierce from the salt, but he can feel someone resting a hand on his shoulder, a sunshine sort of warmth coming from the touch. Just like that, he feels his breath starting to sit a little easier in his chest. "Are you sick? Is everything okay?"

"M'alright, Jester." He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, the water cold on his skin like it's been dredged from sixty yards down. In his periphery he can see Jester crouched down next to him, orange light flickering off her armor and threaded through her hair where she's backlit by the watch fire. "Just, uh, some water that must've gone down the wrong pipe. Nothin' serious."

She gives him a look that's several leagues from convinced, but she doesn't push it, doesn't ask why he smells like he just went for a dip in the Lucidian—bless her for it. She also doesn't move her hand from his shoulder, but Fjord's not even sure she notices it's still there. He can't say he minds.

"Did you know you talk in your sleep?"

"Do I now?" Jester nods, and he makes an effort at an easy smile, hoping it'll shift some of the concern from her brow. "I say anything interesting?"

"You sounded different," she says, and he feels his stomach drop a little, the corners of his smile wavering like a windblown flag. "Not _bad_ different, but—different. I don't know. I mean, it sounded nice!—really nice, actually—but I didn't even recognize it at first. I wondered if it was Molly fooling around but then I saw your mouth moving." She stares at him fully now and there's that look of worry again, written all over her face as clear as one of the exaggerated expressions she might paint on a temple statue. "You sounded worried, Fjord. _Angry_. Obviously you don't have to share anything you don't want to, but—you know that you could, right? We're your friends, and whatever it is that’s going on with you, we want to help. You do know that, don't you?"

It's a kind offer, genuine in a way only she ever seems to manage, but Fjord knows well that Jester doesn't really know what she's suggesting. Doesn't know what she's asking to get involved in because he's barely got a sense of it himself, and so how could he lay that on her shoulders or anyone else's? He was never taught to weigh others down with the heft of his own burdens. No, he wouldn't do that to her or any of the Nein, but he does feel compelled to do something about the line of worry running perpendicular between her brows; concern doesn't suit her face nearly as well as laughter. So he nods, plays up an easy grin until he can see a hint of a matching smile around her mouth. Says, "Yeah, Jester. I know."

 

—

 

It's not long after that things turn ten different kinds of fucked-up, him and Jester and Yasha shackled up by that hulking human fellow who looks them over with a sense of appraisal that sends a shiver through Fjord's bones: somewhere between businesslike and cruel, a farmer checking the teeth on a set of livestock while wondering how they'd sound if their ribs were broken one-by-one.

Later, after they've been hauled down to the basement of the keep and Fjord's strapped down to a table that smells like a slaughterhouse, a curved knife carving the skin from his shoulder, he thinks that this must be proof he's still alive. Bites down on the gag as the smell of his own blood clogs his nose and tells himself that he has to still be among the living because surely the dead couldn't feel pain like this? Surely he wouldn't be a breath away from blacking out if he'd really drowned two decades back? The thought is something of a reassurance, if only a paper thin one.

He rarely sleeps when he's shoved back into one of the cages—pain singing loud in his ears and shoulder gone numb where it's leaning against the bars—but on the occasion when he does, it's dreamless. He wonders if it means that Uk'otoa's forgotten him, or that he's been abandoned. Wonders if it means he's about to die for good.

 

—

 

Fjord hasn't known Clay that long when Clay pulls him aside for a chat, looking more out of sorts than he usually seems—which, Fjord understands, is fucking saying something given that Beau and the others had found him brewing tea from tended graves. (Beau says it'd tasted alright, fruity like her folks' wine, but Fjord's still not sorry to have missed it.) Now, though, Clay's got this somewhat perturbed look on his face, brow knitted up instead of his usual easy smile like there's some itch that's settled deep under his skin, something nagging he can't quite get at.

"Somethin' on your mind, Deuces?"

"Are you dead, Fjord?"

The question hits him like an elbow rammed into his ribs, sharp and sudden enough that he forgets how to breathe for a moment. He glances over his shoulder towards whether the others are setting up camp, but none of them seem to have heard Clay's question or seen the sickly-pale shade of green he's gone.

"Come again?"

Clay scratches the back of his neck, shoulders hunched a little further than usual, like he’s trying to hide that he’s seven feet of discomfort right now. “I know that might’ve sounded a little, ah, _strange,_ maybe, but I’ve got something of a sense about these things — this spell I’ve learned that alerts me to any undead in the vicinity. And last time I threw it out, well, I got a little bit of a glow from you, Fjord, so—not to, you know, be too forward or whatnot, but I just thought I’d mention it.”

“Clay, I don’t know what to tell you,” Fjord says, feeling like his breath is stuck somewhere in his windpipe, the air all gummed up in his lungs and it’s a special effort to keep his tone sounding easy. “I mean, you can tell I’m breathin’, right? That I’m livin’ and bleeding just the same as the rest of you?”

“You’re not though, is the thing.” That furrow’s back between his brows, and Fjord feels his smile starting to buckle under the weight of Clay’s stare. “I mean, I'm not saying you’re as dead as the folks under the earth but—you’re certainly not alive, either. I don’t know. It isn’t natural.”

_Yeah, no shit._

"Are you gonna mention this to the others?"

Clay pauses for a moment—the weight of that silence hanging over Fjord like the sharpened edge of a guillotine—then slowly shakes his head. "Not yet, I don't think. Not until you give me a reason to." He starts to move away and then stops. "But, uh, Fjord? You might want to figure this out sooner rather than later; living with one foot in the grave for so long can't be healthy for anybody."

"Thanks, Clay. I'll keep that in mind."

He gives Fjord a nod and walks away back towards the camp, leaving Fjord standing there with as much steadiness as if he's shouldering the weight of the oceans across his back. Plays over Clay's words in his head because it's different having the truth of the matter spelled out by someone else, different than when he was in his teens and he'd think back to that fateful sunny-skied afternoon and he'd argue the facts back and forth in his own mind, measuring all those minutes spent under the water to the clear-as-day pulse beating steadily at his wrist. But now here's Clay with that grave-cursed sight telling Fjord— _You’re certainly not alive, either_ —the truth he'd always suspected, had maybe always known, but that stuck fast in his throat whenever he'd try to swallow it down.

He can see the others starting to look at him funny now, still standing under the shadow of the pines where Clay had left him, and Fjord fixes up his best effort at an unconcerned smile before heading over to the camp, hands shoved deep in his pockets to still the tremor in his fingertips. Thinks of Clay telling him it isn't healthy to live this way, and Fjord knows he's right but what the fuck is there for him to do about it? Not like he can go back in time and un-swallow the water in his lungs. Not like he can give back the extra lives that Uk'otoa offered up when he pulled Fjord from the waves. No, likelier than anything that he'll be stuck with one foot in the grave until Uk'otoa lets go of his hold and the rest of him follows.


	3. Chapter 3

It keeps Fjord up at night, not knowing what Uk'otoa wants from him in return.

He hadn't given much thought to the notion until one afternoon in the Pentamarket when he'd passed under the shadow of a shrine to the Dawnfather and noticed a collection of trinkets clustered around the base of it: the polished icon of a copper sun, three beeswax candles nearly burned down to the base, a saffron-dyed ribbon tied to the tip of the Dawnfather's symbol that fluttered like a flame in the breeze. Tokens given up in the understanding that a god's favor is something earned—no different than the medallion of the Traveler that Jester keeps at her hip or the way Yasha offers up prayers to gathering storm clouds—and yet what has Fjord paid Uk'otoa for the blessings he's received? No god is so benevolent as to lift someone up with their left hand and expect no sacrifice returned to their right, but isn't that what Uk'otoa's done for him? Saved his life twice and Fjord can't imagine that either instance was an act of charity. Spent enough of his childhood on bended knee listening to the stories of the acolytes to think better of holding _Uk'otoa_ and _mercy_ in the same breath. It keeps Fjord up at night, understanding there's some purpose in store for him and not being able to guess at the shape of it.

Most of the time, Fjord does well at keeping these thoughts from his mind. Mostly—but sometimes he'll be bumping elbows with Beau at a tavern table, Jester's laugh cutting clear through the din and the lamplight turned to blurred halos after his fourth shot of whiskey, and he'll feel this current of fear run through his bones, sharp and sudden as a shock. Biting like the chill of water unwarmed by the sun. Beau's arm sliding against his neck in just the wrong way that the fabric of her wraps turn to scales against his skin, Uk'otoa waiting at his ear and ready to tighten around his throat. A misunderstanding that doesn't last more than a moment but it's enough to remind Fjord of what he still owes, that warm glow of happiness given way to a choking column of salt when he thinks of the scale of his due, a life-debt loaned twice over.

It keeps Fjord up at night, wondering what Uk'otoa might take back if he's unable to pay.

 

—

 

It's their last night in Zadash before turning south towards the Menagerie Coast and by now it's just him and Caleb left in the Leaky Tap's tavern, camped out in front of the fireplace while working through their third tankards of honey-sweet mead. Sugared up like candy but stronger than Fjord expected, and he's already feeling a pleasant buzz take hold at the base of his skull, the world sanded down to something with soft edges, all warm and rose-colored. Across the table, Caleb's eased back into his seat like he's ready to melt into it, face turned towards the glow of the fire in a mirror image of Frumpkin curled up at his neck. Soaking up the warmth the way Fjord used to take great lungfuls of salt-spiced air, like there's something healing in it.

"This is nice, hm?" Caleb asks, eyes half closed as he takes another pull from his mug. Maybe Fjord's a poor judge when he's this tipsy himself, the tavern turned more blurry than not, but he'd swear it looks like most of the tension is missing from Caleb's shoulders, his feet propped up in one of the empty chairs and his muscles gone loose like they've turned to molasses.

"I've certainly had worse nights."

"And we're headed back to your home tomorrow. That must be something to look forward to, _ja_?"

"Jester's home," Fjord corrects, near-empty tankard cradled in his lap. "I'm from further up the coast." It's not wholly a lie; the _Tide's Breath_ made berth in Port Damali more often than anywhere else, and it seemed an easier story to tell than his childhood with the acolytes. "What about you, Widogast? Going all jittery at the thought of leavin' the Empire?"

Caleb smiles, but there's something melancholy to it, like water spilled across a painting so the ink starts to run. "Not exactly; the Empire hasn't felt like home in some time." He takes a slow breath, and when he exhales, it looks like some of those nerves in his shoulders get knotted up again, clock springs wound tight.

"You ever seen the ocean?"

"Does a large lake count?"

Fjord laughs. "You fuckin' city folk — no, that doesn't count."

"Something to look forward to, then."

Sparks burst and flicker out like mayflies. Frumpkin purrs, noses the freckled stretch of skin under Caleb's ear. Across the room, two dwarven women give up their table to head for the stairs, boots heavy against the wood until their steps are swallowed by the upper landing. When Fjord glances back across the table, he sees Caleb's eyes have fallen shut, his breathing evened out enough that Fjord would've thought he'd fallen asleep until Caleb stirs, clears his throat, says, "I know the weight of a secret, Fjord."

He pauses with his tankard halfway to his mouth, sure he must've misheard. "Sorry?"

"Heavy things, no? Bruising, almost, to carry them around so long. And rough—chafing even, like—" Caleb breaks off, moving his hand as if trying to pull the word from the space around him, "— _sandpaper_. Grating away until the skin is worn down, and blistered." His eyes are still closed, Zemnian accent sitting thick on his tongue and words turned half-clumsy from the mead. Reminds Fjord of an ale-soaked Caleb turning Jester around the dance floor in Hupperdook, leaning close to call her _Astrid_.

"Listen, Caleb, I don't know—"

"I spent sixteen years saying nothing—hiding, trying to forget. Feels safer that way, _ja_? Bury the past deep enough that it can't cause any damage, like smothering coals in the sand. It doesn't really work, though; they can still burn your feet." Caleb takes an absent pull from his mug, but it's long since empty. He doesn't seem to notice. "Maybe I would've taken the truth to my grave, I don't know. Certainly I intended to. But then you all came along, loud, and—and _demanding_ , Beauregard especially, and I—" His voice trails off before he finishes the sentence, chin sinking down toward his collar and Frumpkin shifting at his neck.

"Alright, Widogast, I think it's time we get you to bed," Fjord says, abrupt and a little unsteady himself as he eases out of his chair and helps Caleb to his feet, one arm braced around Caleb's back as they head for the stairwell, moving like something three-legged. Fjord can feel Caleb's mouth still moving against his shoulder but whatever he's trying to say is muffled by the fabric, the odd word slipping past that Fjord's not sure what to do with. Not that he knows what the fuck to do with _any_ of this—doesn't know how much of Caleb's words was the mead talking and how much was meant for him, doesn't particularly like the shadow of guilt that's settled around his shoulders along with the weight of Caleb's arm.

It's a slow and clumsy effort to manage Caleb up the stairs and back to the room he shares with Nott, his head tilting lower towards Fjord's chest and legs going newborn-unsteady beneath him, but eventually Fjord gets him into the spare bed and under the blanket, boots unlaced and Frumpkin curled up like a breathing flame at his feet. His mouth is left half open, pressed against the curve of the pillow, and so Fjord loses the first half of whatever he's still trying to say into the cotton, but then Caleb shifts and Fjord just catches, "—wouldn't have thought so, you know? But it helped."

 

—

 

That conversation sticks with Fjord as the Nein works their way south towards Nicodranas, Caleb's words sitting fast like sharp-edged pebbles in his shoe. Takes a step and feels them digging into his heel as he keeps quiet that it's Uk'otoa guiding them to the Menagerie Coast, that great fucking eye turning up in his dreams every other night with visions of the sandstone temple and a slit-eyed shadow prowling around the base of it. He can't see how the path connects, though—been up and down the Coast often enough to know there isn't any such structure on its shores—and so he tells himself that it can't matter much to keep the Nein in the dark a little longer. He'll speak up if he sees danger on the horizon and Uk'otoa steering them into it.

That's the plan, at least, but it's not like he anticipated that night on the docks when things go all sorts of sideways. Not like he knew that in between firing bolts of witch-green energy, he'd _feel_ Uk'otoa turning his head towards the boat tied up in the harbor, some force drawing at his feet like the cuffs are back around his ankles and the scaled fuck is pulling on the other end of the chain. Like the tug of surf at his calves and the sand going loose under his feet, sudden and demanding as a riptide and him unprepared to fight against it.

After they've beaten their retreat—Cad soaked through and shivering like a wet cat, and the rest of them looking to Fjord as their captain—he turns the bow towards Urukaxl. The others know that's where they're headed, but they don't realize the _Mist_ is making better time than it should be, the currents shifted to lengthen the stretch of their wake. Fjord sees it, though. Feels Uk'otoa's building anticipation like it's wired into his own nerves, and the guilt over it keeping him up better than the whine of a mosquito in his ear. Sure, the rest of the Nein all volunteered to come along—not as if Fjord pressed a knife to their throats to get them here—but what exactly has he gotten them involved in? What's waiting on Urukaxl to swallow them whole?  

He plans on saying something to Jester the night they're on watch, the two of them alone seeming as good a time as any, and there's something that feels a little safer about the way her face is half-shadowed by moonlight; he won't have to see her disappointment as clearly. But before he's worked up the nerve to say anything, mouth feeling dry and unpracticed, he hears her give this soft inhalation, this quiet, " _oh_ ," as she takes his hand and pulls him over to the railing while the water beneath them fills with a slow-moving drift of jellyfish. A pastel-colored cloud lighting up the waves as if the stars had shifted to blaze below their feet. And it's too perfect a moment to wreck with the messiness of his history, to watch that look of wonder and delight on Jester's face turn to ash as she understands the scope of the lies he's told. To feel the warmth of her hand slip from his palm as she sees that he's made them into the pawns of Uk'otoa's game. No, he can't. Selfish, certainly, but he can't.

 

—

 

The rest of the journey to Urukaxl is a swift one, but Fjord spends the whole course of it with guilt knotting up tight in his throat until it feels something choking, feels like it's tangling the air in his windpipe anytime he looks over at any of the Nein. Isn't exactly eased when they coast into the harbor and Avantika sends a fucking _ogre_ as part of their welcome party, bringing them back to the _Squalleater_ where it's made clear that they're under her guard now, chained up tight even if they can't feel the metal at their wrists. It's only for Fjord that she seems willing to loosen the irons, to let out some of the tension in his leash, but he doesn't understand why until the first time that they're alone, when she runs her hand across the front of his armor and tells him that Uk'otoa had promised her another Chosen would be forthcoming.

"Truly you must be blessed," she says in that purring way of hers, "for Uk'otoa to have such a hand in your fate. Lifted up from the waves like our God has baptized you himself. I must say, I'm impressed."

Fjord doesn't much like the language she uses, or the way she'd looked over the rest of the Nein like she was ranking them on their expendability. His hands are fisted shut to keep from summoning the falchion because he can feel the shift of scales against his neck, a reminder that Uk'otoa made a special effort to get him here and wouldn't take too kindly to his fucking it up. He lets Avantika place his hand on the tattoo over her sternum and wonders what Uk'otoa would do to him if he tried to run, wonders whether his throat would fill up with water or if he'd feel the sudden pressure of an ocean's weight crushing his heart and lungs. Avantika's palm settles at his nape and Fjord thinks of what she would do if he pulled back, thinks of the rest of the Nein up on deck, outnumbered twice over and that ogre's greatclub a half-second from falling against Jester's skull.

 _I never should have brought us here_ , he thinks. _But what choice did I have? Uk'otoa would have killed me._

Thinks again, as Avantika pulls him down to her, _Then maybe I should have died._

He buries his concern deep enough that Avantika can't see it in his eyes, hides the tremor in his hands with a bruised-palm grip around the falchion's hilt as he follows her into the jungle and up to the temple with its prowling yuan-ti guard. _Find_ , Uk'otoa had told him, and he fucking found it, didn't he? Won a way inside and worked his way down to the floor of the structure, heart stopping a half-dozen times over as each new head of the hydra had lifted out of the basin, and how much more does Uk'otoa want from him? How much longer is it until he's allowed to rest? There's eight of the hydra's heads littered on the ground or sprouted twin-like from the stumps, and Fjord knows it's a miracle that none of them fell by its fangs. What would he have done then? How could he explain to the others that he'd let Uk'otoa use them all as cannon fodder, stationed at the front line for a cause even Fjord doesn't know the shape of? Every day he keeps this up, he's gambling their lives for the sake of preserving his own, and there is no scale that would value that as an equal trade. _Gods_ —were he not so afraid, maybe he could find it in himself to be less selfish with his own life.

As the others search through the rest of the temple floor, he takes a moment to stare up at the mural of Uk'otoa on wall, ridged eyes raised in sandstone along the serpent's length. Thinks of himself at fourteen wearing matching iconography in paint across his chest and legs, waiting on the edge of the gangplank for the ocean to swallow him whole. Remembers salt coating his tongue as his lungs swelled with water, and that desperate, last-ditch plea for the gods to save his life. All things considered, he thinks he'd take that back now, if he could.

 _Reward_ , Uk'otoa tells him, but Fjord's heard that lie before.


	4. Chapter 4

If the greatest mistake of his life lay in unknowingly offering up his service to Uk'otoa, second on the list is letting Avantika beat him to floor of the basin, letting her kick free of his grip instead of drowning her before she could do any further damage. He considers himself a special kind of lucky that she'd taken his assurance that his hold on her was an accident, but Fjord knows better than to bank on that good fortune holding out. Though it's not like there's much time to think on it further with the temple walls filling up around them, water rushing up to their shins as they make for the stairs. They crest the landing not long after the tide reaches high enough to set the hydra and yuan-ti bodies adrift; funny how fast the water turns muddy from the blood.

They're all still beat from the fight—Fjord can hear it in Yasha's double-time breathing, can see it in the way Beau leans against the nearest wall for support—but the water is still rushing upwards, and of the things they can tally up in their favor, _time_ isn't on the list. Fjord swallows as he looks up towards the ceiling above the blood-watered orchard, focuses on thinking about the yuan-ti still waiting there and pointedly ignores the crowded village sitting at the base of the temple. That's still a lot of mess for them to wade through before they're home free on the ships and, somehow, he doesn't think the yuan-ti would fall for his manticore trick a second time.

It's a desperate scramble back to the upper level: the site of Cad turned fourteen-feet tall would warrant more attention were it not for the water still rising fast around them. Avantika's wrapped a strip of fabric around her palm, but Fjord can see a dark stain already leaking through the center of it, a reminder of another problem that will have to wait for the future. Something to revisit when they're not still knee-deep in the shit, water cresting up the stairwell and him dodging strikes from the fucked-up yuan-ti with snakes sprouting from its shoulders. Soon enough the flow is up to his chest, and then the bottom of his chin, filling up the corners of the upper level faster than he expected. A lifetime at sea gives him a sense of ease on how long he can hold his own breath, but what about the others? How long will Caleb's lungs hold out, or Nott's? He takes a deep breath as the tide rises over his head, the water leveling out where it meets the ceiling, bumping up against the still-locked trap door. Fucking hell. If it's not one thing, it's another.

In the midst of trying keep his breath even in his chest and sending eldritch shots at the snake-eyed brood guards, Fjord loses focus of the details around him, only picks up pieces of the fight lit up funny from the glow around Caduceus. A bubble bursting from Yasha's mouth after she takes a nasty-looking hit to the ribs. Red filling the water around Beau after a claw takes a chunk of skin out of her forearm. The three yuan-ti bodies listing in the water, and a fourth floating nearby, blue hair drifting out like seaweed—

_Oh, no. No, no, gods—please no._

Fjord's moving through the water before he gives himself time to think about it, hasn't even come up with a shape of an idea until he grabs hold of Jester, her skin turned clammy and too cold from the water. He's almost out of air himself, but whatever he has left he gives to her, presses her mouth to his own and exhales, slow, until he feels her coming to life beneath his hands. Thinks, as he feels himself going unconscious, _that's not how I wanted to do that for the first time._

 

—

 

Later, when he's pressed between Avantika's sheets, the muscled curve of her leg against his and her bandaged hand resting on his chest, he'll lie. Tell her he saw the key in Jester's hand, a spark of magic glinting gold off the metal, and he'd saved her to save them all. The lie will taste as harsh as iron on his teeth, but he'll swallow around the taste of it, focus on the steady beating of Avantika's heart's under his palm, the certainty of the power she now holds in her Uk'otoa-blessed hand. He'll tell the lie even as he relives the truth underneath: the sense memory of Jester's half-open mouth, the warmth of her skin like kissing sunlight through the water's cold around them. He'll lie, give Avantika another bruising kiss as she digs her hands into his hip, tugging him closer.

But after he's snuck from the room, feeling the marks of Avantika's teeth and fingers and tongue on him like a brand, like something tattooed clear enough for the rest of the Nein to see, it's Jester he remembers, that moment in the temple that he relives. The ocean-crushing terror he'd felt at seeing her so still, the utter relief of her coming back to life in his hands.

 _Sleep well with your bad decisions_ , Clay had said as Fjord eased the door closed behind him. Fuck—as if he couldn't see it. As if he didn't know the gamble he was taking. As if any of this was his choice, and not that of a cursed god somewhere far below the waves.

 

—

 

They've got nothing but time on the trip to Darktow, and so Fjord spends most of his days thinking—his nights, Avantika still holds sway over—weighing his futures and not liking much of what he finds. As clear as the sun-touched water below them, Fjord knows Uk'otoa won't rest until he's been let loose, and so what does that mean for the rest of them? He lays in the dark with Avantika pressed against his back and measures the balance of his own life against opening the floodgates for Uk'otoa to roam free around the oceans. Since their arrival on Urukaxl, Uk'otoa has left his dreams alone, but Fjord understands he's only being given a temporary reprieve; Uk'otoa doesn't need to hold a fire to Fjord's heels when Avantika's already pushing forward like there's an inferno raging inside of her.

If left to her own devices, Avantika would see Uk'otoa freed before the end of the year, and Fjord has no doubt that it would only be a few weeks more before the seas rose under Uk'otoa's stead and split the cities of the Menagerie Coast asunder. He thinks of the falchion, when Avantika sleeps beside him, ready and wicked-edged and waiting to be called forth. Would she even stir before he had the blade in his hand and her throat opened wide? As far as deaths go, it would be a fast one, and relatively painless, too. Were there any chance of the rest of them making it off the ship alive after, he might consider it more seriously, but he won't gamble with the lives of the Nein as the price for his poor judgments. If it were only his own safety at stake, then perhaps he could find the courage to act decisively and cut short Avantika's crusade, but with the rest of the Nein aboard, he has permission to play the coward a little longer.

So instead, he thinks, playing out the possible outcomes and not finding one that doesn't end up some measure of bloody—either of Avantika's, or his own. It becomes habit to keep the falchion free at his side or strapped to his belt, even when he's not doing anything more dangerous than playing cards with Beau or drinking with Nott. Partly because he doesn't trust Avantika's crew not to turn mean on them, but mostly because he likes reminding himself of the stakes of the situation, and the sun catching yellow off the crystal's edge is difficult to ignore.

And, partly, because he likes reminding Avantika of where he stands, too. Sure, she's got Uk'otoa's magic running through her now—plays the part of the priestess every morning when she shifts the waves under the keel, speeding their progress onwards—but it's him who's got the next key waiting, who holds some measure of promised power between them. Call it a small victory, but he also likes for Avantika to see him pulling the falchion from whatever water-soaked pocket realm where it lives; even if she took it from his hand with the edge of her own blade, he'd be able to call it back with the other. She could kill him, he supposes, but—for all their sakes—he hopes he still has her convinced of his allegiance to the cause. That, or perhaps she's just yet to grow bored of him. 

Whatever the next move is to be, though, it won't happen yet with the lot of them fenced in by the beams of the _Squalleater_. And so Fjord waits, and he thinks, wondering how the dice will fall when they make berth at Darktow.

 

—

 

"You got a minute, Fjord?"

"Bet I could even find three or four. What do you need?"

Beau closes the cabin door behind her and takes a seat on the hammock opposite where he'd been pulling on his boots. She's fidgety—or, fidgety for Beau, at least. Hands tangling idly in the fabric and eyes shifting around the room; it takes him a moment to realize they keep moving back towards where the falchion is laying near his right hand.

"Doesn't that ever freak you out?" she asks, tilting her head at where the amber stone is embedded in the hilt. "The eye, I mean. Don't you wonder if Uk'otoa's watching you through it?"

"Not sure it works like that," Fjord says, running his thumb over the sideways break in the crystal. "I think it's more...symbolic, than anything else. Like Jester's token of the Traveler—only, less holy."

Beau snorts. "The Traveler may be a god, but knowing the way Jester worships, I'm not sure he's necessarily a _holy_ one."

Fjord laughs. "Fair."

Beau's eyes shift away from the falchion's hilt, but her hands are no less restless. _You don't need to worry about that anyway_ , Fjord thinks, watching her. _Uk'otoa's been living on my shoulder for almost two decades. He's never needed a crystal to know what I'm up to_.

"Is that what you were wantin' to talk about?" he asks. "The sword?"

"No—or, yes? Fuck." Beau massages her temple. "Fuck, this is so fucking awkward. You know, we took a vote on who was going to have this chat with you. Consensus was that it should be me or Jester, since we've known you the longest, but it's not like I was going to ask _her_ to do this, so—" she breaks off, fingers drumming an absent pattern against her knee. "Fuck me, I _hate_ having to talk about emotions."

"Beau—?"

"The fuck are you doing with her, Fjord?"

 _Oh_. "You mean Avantika?"

"What—has someone else been fucking you into the mattress every night? Yeah, Avantika. I mean—okay, sure, I get that she's hot, and, yeah, she's really working the whole pirate-queen vibe, but you have to know that this is a bad idea, right?"

"Look, it ain't like that. I'm not—"

"You're _not_ getting fucked into the mattress every night?"

"— _with her_. Not really. Not in any other sense but the, uh—" he waves a hand, feeling a flush stealing up the back of his neck, "—you know, physical." The cabin feels about ten degrees too warm. He'd like to borrow Nott's neverending flask and drink enough whiskey to drown in.

Beau frowns, arms folded over her chest. "So, what? You're playing her?"

"I guess? I—" Fjord sighs, scrubs a hand over his face. "Fuck, this is awkward. You sure you wanna have this chat?"

"Yeah, no, this sucks. But come on—let's power through."

"Great. Fuck."

"Is that how you'd describe Avantika?"

Fjord snorts. "Yes, and no—she's mostly just terrifyin'. And all about control, which probably ain't much of a surprise."

Beau laughs a little, but doesn't say anything else. Not yet. She's still waiting on a better answer from him, but Fjord doesn't know how to explain this to her without telling her about Uk'otoa's role in it, too: that everytime he touches Avantika, he feels the shift of scales at his neck and wrists, like Uk'otoa is there in the bed with them, twining the two of them closer together. "Look, it's not like I planned on it  happening or nothin'. The first time was the night after Urukaxl and she was all, you know—and then, I—"

"Got fucked into the mattress, yeah, we've covered that part."

He shakes his head. "Not how I was gonna phrase it, but, yeah, more or less. But then the times after...Look, sayin' _yes_ felt safer than telling her _no_ , get me? Especially when it's the seven of us against her whole gods-damned crew and she's got Uk'otoa's magic on her side. Makin' sure she trusted me seemed like the easiest way to guarantee we all got to Darktow alive. Keep your enemies closer, and all that."

" _Keep your enemies close_ doesn't usually mean _six inches inside of her_ , but, sure, I get what you're saying." She still sounds skeptical, like Fjord just told her he's decided to take up lion taming—which, in a sense, he is—but maybe less skeptical than she had to start with, so. That's something. He'll take whatever small victories he can get. "Just—try to be smart about this. Or, as smart as anyone can be when they're dealing with someone as batshit zealous as Avantika. If Uk'otoa told her to, she'd pull your heart out while you slept and wouldn't think twice about it. You know that, right?"

"Yeah," Fjord says, thinking back to the nights he'd considered doing the same to her. "I know. It's because she's so dangerous that I'm tryin' to stay in her favor as long as I can."

"Then I guess let's hope that your dick holds out until we get to Darktow and we'll figure out a new plan of attack there."

Fjord laughs. "Deal. We done, now? 'Cause I would really love to be done with this chat."

"Trust me, this is also more conversation about your sex life than I ever wanted to have, but, yeah, I think we're done."

"Great. You wanna get a drink? I could definitely use one, or two, or ten."

"Double it, and I'm in."

Beau gets to her feet and leads the two of them out of the room, her words sitting heavy on Fjord like the weight of the falchion at his hip. He hadn't been giving much consideration to what the others must've thought of his actions, but what he'd seen behind Beau's pulled-back curtain wasn't overly flattering—that he's a selfish or short-sighted motherfucker who's making decisions with his dick and little else. Not that he blames them, though—the past few weeks haven't given them much reason to believe much better of him. It's easy for Fjord to tell himself that the mask he's wearing is just a temporary thing—that he can play the part of Avantika's lover and Uk'otoa's acolyte for now, that he can shed the persona once he's done—but talking to Beau makes him wonder whether it's really so simple. Maybe if he's not careful, he'll get to the point where he's taken the pretending so far as to make it permanent. That, instead of painted scales he can wash off with water, he'll end up covered head-to-toe in tattoos.


End file.
